I'm Taking What They're Giving Cause I'm Working For A Living

NY Times reporter Catherine Rampell has a sobering look at our economy.  The jobs we've lost just aren't coming back.  And that's the crux of a much bigger problem.  A lot of people are missing the point on this article.  I've been saying that these jobs aren't coming back for a while now, that's a known issue.  It's how people are reacting to this new normal that is the key.

For the last two years, the weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to do what they would have done anyway: dismiss millions of people — like file clerks, ticket agents and autoworkers — who were displaced by technological advances and international trade.

The phasing out of these positions might have been accomplished through less painful means like attrition, buyouts or more incremental layoffs. But because of the recession, winter came early.

The tough environment has been especially disorienting for older and more experienced workers like Cynthia Norton, 52, an unemployed administrative assistant in Jacksonville.

“I know I’m good at this,” says Ms. Norton. “So how the hell did I end up here?”

Administrative work has always been Ms. Norton’s “calling,” she says, ever since she started work as an assistant for her aunt at 16, back when the uniform was a light blue polyester suit and a neckerchief. In the ensuing decades she has filed, typed and answered phones for just about every breed of business, from a law firm to a strip club. As a secretary at the RAND Corporation, she once even had the honor of escorting Henry Kissinger around the building.

But since she was laid off from an insurance company two years ago, no one seems to need her well-honed office know-how. 

So you want to know why there's so much anger out there?  Older workers are still unemployed, while those with newer skills can find jobs.  Older workers, the younger baby boomers, still run this country.  And they are pissed.

Ms. Norton is reluctant to believe that her three decades of experience and her typing talents, up to 120 words a minute, are now obsolete. So she looks for other explanations.

Employers, she thinks, fear she will be disloyal and jump ship for a higher-paying job as soon as one comes along.

Sometimes she blames the bad economy in Jacksonville. Sometimes she sees age discrimination. Sometimes she thinks the problem is that she has not been able to afford a haircut in a while. Or perhaps the paper her résumé is printed on is not nice enough. 

Nobody likes to think it's their fault.  it's always Somebody Else's Problem.  People like Cynthia Norton are looking for an explanation, a reason...someone to blame for this mess.  People searching for a reason, when that reason is justifying why the problem isn't my fault, will often find one.

Ms. Norton has spent most of the last two years working part time at Wal-Mart as a cashier, bringing home about a third of what she had earned as an administrative assistant. Besides the hit to her pocketbook, she grew frustrated that the work has not tapped her full potential.

“A monkey could do what I do,” she says of her work as a cashier. “Actually, a monkey would get bored.”

Ms. Norton says she cannot find any government programs to help her strengthen the “thin bootstraps” she intends to pull herself up by. Because of the Wal-Mart job, she has been ineligible for unemployment benefits, and she says she made too much money to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid last year.

“If you’re not a minority, or not handicapped, or not a young parent, or not a veteran, or not in some other certain category, your hope of finding help and any hope of finding work out there is basically nil,” Ms. Norton says. “I know. I’ve looked.” 

There are a whole hell of a lot of Cynthia Nortons out there, folks.  They're getting the crap end of the stick for arguably the first time in their lives.  And they see, well, minorites, and the handicapped, and young parents, and veterans, and people in other certain categories getting benefits, and they are really, really pissed off about it.

If you read between the lines, Rampell's article explains the Tea Party, the growing backlash against immigrants and minorities and anyone who's not Joe Average White Guy.  It all comes down to jobs and change, and for a whole hell of a lot of baby boomers, there's too much of the latter and none of the former.

And they'll be damned if they're going to let that happen without a fight.  The War for the Status Quo is well and joined...